The scandal of translation

I had long ceased quoting to my students the hackneyed old Italian jibe that translators were traitors in the firm belief that these had become conscious artists even in a country like ours although there is no such thing as a tradition of translation studies. But it seems that the jack of all trades mentality is still very much with us.

What has transpired with the humiliating official Maltese version of the draft Constitution for Europe submitted to the European summit in Thessaloniki would make the traitors of yore blush with shame. They at least did not err out of sheer presumption. Let this be a lesson to us all.

There is no royal road to translation. It takes years of dedication and daily practice to become real professional in this field. The ones who make it go to great pains to effect a passage of ideas and feelings from one language to another, and not merely a passage of words. So despite the magnitude of this particular gaffe I will seek to avoid the sensationalism inherent in muck slinging.

I am not asking here for the pound of flesh, but I do ask what steps will be taken so that this will not happen again. The Akkademja tal-Malti submitted a report to the ministers of education and foreign affairs on the return from Brussels of its translation commission delegation who went on an orientation visit to the Translation Service Directorate of the EU between March 11-16 this year.

Among other things we drew the attention of the powers that be that the SDT services there would be only too glad to have an authoritative point of reference on the island so long as the chosen organism enjoys the government's full confidence. They are very much aware that the level of translations reaching the various institutions of the EU at the moment is quite substandard.

It was also made clear to us that when it comes to the recruitment of interpreters and in-house translators no lowering of standards will be tolerated. Whether they are in a position to gauge these standards and assess local translators' credentials is another matter altogether. They are however as eager as we are (my innate optimism stops me from saying, even more) that the situation will not reach the absurd proportions where an inferior quality of Maltese in Brussels becomes legally more binding than the standard idiomatic Maltese of academic circles in Malta.

Let it be said from the outset therefore that nothing will stop the Akkademja from making submissions to the head of the Language Department of the Council of the European Union whenever our language suffers a blow like the present one which has, thankfully, raised such an uproar in the local media. We are as always offering our services within the limits of our capacity. But both the government and the university must play their part, in collaboration with our European partners, to set up an Institute for Translation Studies as quickly as possible, whatever it may cost.

This will be the place where professional courses are organised, as well as being the seat for a functional language board where the best minds from all walks of life can take their place to deliberate on translation issues.

Each one of these "elders" will then be saddled with organising the necessary meetings of sub-committees or cells with the aim of keeping abreast of linguistic developments in their respective fields and if possible anticipate future ones as well. Thus, an attack mentality will eventually replace the disorganised defence mechanisms that are at the root of the present mentality that when it comes to the Maltese language you can get away with almost anything. Then, these elders acting together with linguistic experts as one college or academy will have the last say and their decisions binding.

We have long basked in the sun of our own misconceptions. Being Maltese is not synonymous with a special claim to the divine gift of tongues. I hate to think about the potentially harmful consequences even at diplomatic level if this translation scandal were to involve highly sensitive texts instead of a "mere" draft.

I repeat this is not the time for recriminations. But for goodness' sake, translating "... the inhabitants of Europe arriving in successive waves" into ... l-habitanti (sic) waslu f'mewg ta' success, just to mention one howler, has absolutely nothing to do with the analytics of translations.

Here we are still in the realm of comprehension - the "translator" simply did not understand what the words mean in the source language, let alone make use of the available tools to change this part of a sentence effectively into the target language, that is, Maltese. Not even receiving a direct order to translate word for word can clear whoever it was from blame. Moreover, if this person belongs to the legal profession, as it is being rumoured, then I cannot imagine how s/he would have attempted to translate functional ambiguities of, let us say, polysemous legal English adjectives.

My mind boggles when I realise that this "translator" might not be the odd one out. For a person like me interested in translation studies as a discipline on its own merits, this means that we are still very far away from dealing with such notions as text-typological conventions, functional equivalence, negative shift, accuracy or even Jakobson's three types of translations for that matter.

While it is understandable that the prospect of earning very good money could blind a person into overestimating his or her abilities, it is totally unacceptable that any Tom, Dick, and Harry should be allowed to bring our national language, an institution in its own rights, into disrepute. As we say in Maltese : Ix-xoghol tih lil min jaf jaghmlu.

(Dr Aquilina is senior lecturer and area coordinator - languages at the Junior College of the University of Malta, translator of various books from French into Maltese and chairman of the Translation Commission of the Akkademja tal-Malti.)